God of War III! Press Event Q&A and New Trailer

Earlier this week, over 50 media outlets from North America and Europe saw God of War III, the “epic finale” to Kratos’ tale of revenge, played before their very eyes for the first time. The game’s director, Stig Asmussen, led off the session by sharing some key features of the game: Titan gameplay, Ride-able enemy characters, a new weapon system, large-scale battle. All of these were demonstrated in this extended trailer, which was shown next:

To further drive home that this trailer was produced in the game’s engine, the audience was treated to nearly 20 minutes of gameplay (which you’ll be reading about all over the internet today, no doubt). After the gameplay demonstration, Stig took questions from the press. Here they are (paraphrased – I can only type so fast!):

Gamespot: How will you catch people up to the story?

Stig: One of the criteria of the game is to “bridge the series.” Some recent games were confusing if you missed certain chapters in the story. I don’t want that to happen with God of War III.

Game Revolution: Has the ESRB gone too far?

Stig: People have to stop looking at games like they’re a toy. There are a lot of mature games and a lot of mature gamers. We look at these like movies. I’m a husband with 2 baby twins, and we’re not making this game for them, we’re making it for people like you. Everything we do is in the character of Kratos. We’re not doing gore just to do gore.

Gamepro: I didn’t see red experience orbs coming off enemies, is it just too early to show?

Stig: It’s just too early to show, expect all that to come back.

UGO: You mentioned this will be the “epic finale.” Is this the final God of War?

Stig: I don’t know about the future of God of War, I’m just focused on God of War III.

Playboy: Gamers don’t want long load times or storylines, do you plan to recap everything?

Stig: For the most part in God of War games, we’ve never made people watch very long movies. Don’t expect God of War III to change that. As far as loading, it’s something we take pride in. We’re a streaming game, we don’t have load times.

G4: Are you going to strip down Kratos’ abilities in the beginning of the game again?

Stig: As a gamer, I’d like to start with everything Kratos has. But as a game designer, it’s not good for gamers who have never played before. We’re still deciding.

IGN: Large-scale puzzle sequences could get people lost because of the scale of the game. How do you keep people focused?

Stig: I’ve never seen anyone else work on this kind of scale. Because of that, we don’t have anything to refer to. We don’t plan on something where you go to a marker and get a hint. We want to design it so that it has a flow, and we won’t have to drop hints. We also do extensive playtesting. Working on these Titans is tough. When we first started we realized we’re doing something we’ve never done before. When you’re on these titans, it doesn’t change how Kratos handles –he can still pull cranks and ride Cyclopes and fight bosses.

G4: When you’re on the titan, how does his movement affect gameplay. Will that affect gameplay?

Stig: Perhaps. [laughter]

Now I know you readers had plenty of questions for the God of War team. I spoke with a number of the dev team, and am currently editing those together for you to see on the Blog next week!

How smarmy was the guy from Playboy games? haha I just imagine him wearing a robe with some lucky guy smirk on his face. Even if it’s games, it’s pretty cool to tell people at a bar, “I work for Playboy”

OMG!!!
It looks super cool, I love the whole series, and also I agree with the guy that talk about the missing red orbs coming out of the enemies as you kill them…but I know the game still in development.

I guess I’m not entirely sure what I’m seeing above. At this point, I have no trouble believing that that’s running on the in-game engine, but are we looking at something like a pre-rendered cutscene from that engine, or is that what the action in the game will look like, polygon for polygon. If it’s the latter, then that could be incredibly impressive, especially that last portion with the Titan.

Either way, I’m sure the game is going to look amazing, but I really don’t think that CG trailer that was originally released in conjunction with Jaffe’s raving, helped in terms of expectations- especially in terms of Kratos who looked frighteningly realistic in the original trailer.